French media have revealed that a number of athletes who participated in the Paris 2024 Olympics have returned their medals to the Olympic Committee due to a “change in their shape”.
The International Olympic Committee has announced that the medals made for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris by the Parisian Mint, which were deemed “defective” due to paint problems, will be replaced.
She explained that to date, about 100 medals have been returned to the “Mint”, which will manufacture new medals for athletes.
More than 100 medals from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have been returned by athletes to the organizing committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games due to defects in the quality of the paint used in the medals they received last summer.
“The organizing committee is working closely with the Paris Mint, which is responsible for the manufacture and quality control of medals, to assess complaints and find out the causes of damage,”the IOC said in its statement.
“The defective medals will be replaced, and they will be engraved in the same way,”the commission added. The commission noted that the process of replacing the medals will begin in the coming weeks.
According to the France 24 network, the spokeswoman for the mint rejected the term “defective”, noting that the medals that have been reported damaged since August have already been replaced. She stressed that the replacement process is carried out professionally and continuously according to the requests that arrive from the athletes.
Many athletes have expressed their dissatisfaction with the state of their medals via social media, including the American athlete Nega Houston, who won the bronze medal in Figure Skating, and said that his medal “starts to peel off” and looks “as if it had passed from a war”.
French swimmer Johan nduy Brod also expressed dissatisfaction with the state of his bronze medal, noting that it looked like he won it at the 1924 Olympics and not 2024.
According to the French website “La liter”, the problems with the medals were the result of the use of new components in the paint, as one of the components was banned in the new regulations, which necessitated an urgent replacement.
The medals were manufactured at the Parisian Mint, the gold ones weigh 529 grams, the silver ones 525 grams, while the bronze ones weigh 455 grams.
